Aug 09, 2011

Gamification is Bullshit?

In terms of the audience he's addressing, I pretty much agree with everything he says. Gamification in this sense is just the latest conceptual hook that allows marketing executives and business experts to convince their paymasters that they're up-to-date and innovative. ("Innovation", ironically, was last year's gamification.)

It isn't just marketing people, of course. When the talk turns to serious games or games + learning, a similar move is often visible. The people drawn to gamification in this sense are drawn to it because it makes them look like they're doing something to improve their yields, reach the unreached, learn that last stubborn group of the unlearned, mobilize the unmotivated. Gamification here is both alibi and life-preserver. It explains why there is something still to be done (we haven't used games! which is why people don't buy our stuff/take their medicine/learn their math/smash the state!) and why you should keep the gamifier in the picture. (Do you know how to make a game, Mr. CEO/university president/non-profit manager/Marxist theorist?)

But these are waves that wash up on the beach. When the tide recedes, the sand is still there.

What's the sand of gamification? What will be left when this too has passed like the once-universal faith that we would all one day live and work in Second Life?

Comments

Gamification isn't the "latest" anything. Its an approach that has been used for at least two decades in the loyalty and motivation industry (of which I'm a practitioner). What "gamification" has done is take that decades-old and proven approach (whereby engagement mechanics are used to encourage behavior) and given it a new name and added a whole new set of mechanics to the process (i.e. "traditionally" gamified loyalty programs don't have social dynamics like competition and cooperation -- the new gamification movement has opened the industry to that possibility). As such, gamification has almost nothing to do with the gaming industry -- if anything, its an elevation of an approach that loyalty marketers have owned and excelled at for many years.

Speaking of the sand of gamification, what's a good article / book that argues MMOs are the blueprint of mankind's virtual dependent future? People that I have trouble convincing believe that I'm only over romanticizing my passion, just like any other mmo addict.

I have to agree with Ian: I think he's exactly on point here in his typical trenchant style.

The "sand" is the idea that motivational techniques work. How far we can take these and how we can apply new techniques learned in games seems to be the central question of gamification... surrounded by healthy consulting fees and wild over-promises about how games will change our lives and save us all.

@Rits: I've been making MMOs for over 15 years. I have to say that I think you are over-romanticizing your passion. The virtual world will continue to take its place in our lives -- and as it does so, it will disappear, blending seamlessly as just another part of our lives, no longer "virtual" vs. "actual." But MMOs as we know them today are at best an early evolutionary indicator of this convergence.

I was checking through the comments here to see if I could call out anything I actual disagree with. Unfortunately, there wasn't. I'll have to resound both Mike and Ian in saying, The "sand" is the idea that motivational techniques work. How far we can take these and how we can apply new techniques learned in games seems to be the central question of gamification... surrounded by healthy consulting fees and wild over-promises about how games will change our lives and save us all.

Maybe I didn't make it clear but what you just said is quite where my stance is, whereas others understand my words as if I'm taking The Matrix as a documentary.

But how would you explain the potentials which you referred as "at its best"? Consumer's desire to possess virtual goods is one thing, proven by monetary statistics; but there are also humanistic elements that MMOs offer but reality is failing to supply. How would you prove that the demands exist in a rapidly growing number? and why so?

Just found out Google is gamifying the News by letting you level up certain badges, like if you read Basketball articles you'll level up your Basketball badge. Then you can click on your badge to find additional articles that you can read to help level it up even more. Very odd, but might be a way to get some people more hooked on Google News.